Abstract

Active pursuit of redefining one's intent and purpose within the study of musical culture has preoccupied many ethnomusicologists since the inception of their discipline. More recently, cross-cultural efforts in musical performance have demonstrated the need for reconsidering universals in musical behavior. Using research tools in ethnomusicology, along with creative tools in jazz composition, the speculative theory presented here proposes that structure, although expressed conditionally within specific cultural contexts, is an inherent universal in all musical practice. ;Consequently, concepts are devised in order to organize and interchange various parameters of musical structure, thereby encouraging the potential for new cross-cultural performance contexts. Analogies with structural relationships in the physical universe are made in support of the above thesis, and interrelated with poetry and musical composition, express a metaphysical principle of interdependence between perceptions of unity and plurality. ;Finally, as ethnomusicologists are continually persuaded to reassess their own observations of the individual in relation to society and musical tradition , composers and performers alike will come to depend on scholarly assistance for better interpreting the increasing market availability of world music information. Chromodality, as a theory of practice, should ultimately contribute to this need for distinguishing between the intention, integrity and accuracy of each new approach that surfaces in cross-cultural musicality